1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a printed circuit board (PCB), a manufacturing method thereof, and a semiconductor package including the printed circuit board. More specifically, the present invention relates to a printed circuit board in which a cavity for mounting an electronic component is formed on its upper surface so that a gap between upper and lower packages is obtained at the time of manufacturing a semiconductor package having a package on package (PoP) structure.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, as mobile products become thinned and highly functional, the number of inputs/outputs (I/O) of flip chips employed in the mobile products has been increased accordingly. Further, as the number of the I/Os increases, it is required to provide fine pitch solder bumps on a PCB.
As shown in FIG. 1, in a typical semiconductor package having a PoP structure, a electronic component 122 (e.g., AP chip) is mounted on the upper surface of the PCB 121 of the lower semiconductor package. In this structure, if the ball pitch is reduced in order to increase the number of I/Os of the upper semiconductor package 110, it is difficult to have a sufficient gap between the upper semiconductor package and the lower semiconductor package.
To cope with this, a structure has been proposed in which an electronic component 222 (e.g., a IC chip) is embedded in a PCB 221 as shown in FIG. 2. However, in this structure, costly IC chips in PCBs failed during the manufacturing process are discarded together with the boards, thereby causing the manufacturing cost to be increased. In FIG. 2, reference numerals 210 and 220 denote the upper semiconductor and the lower semiconductor, respectively.